I have always been amazed by a big amount of Christmas cookies varieties baked in Slovakia since I came to study to Bratislava. There is nothing close to this tradition in that part of Ukraine, where I grew up.

Every December my Slovak and Czech friends post beautiful pictures of their Christmas baking on Facebook and this year I’ve decided to make a baking marathon and to make some cookies too. I’ve spent almost a week in the kitchen and made 11 kinds of cookies. Due to popular demand on my Instagram (btw, you are welcome to follow me, I’m @my.ko.la there) I will post two of them, crinkles and biscotti.

300g of spelt flour (and of course, you can substitute in with all purpose white flour)

2 eggs, beaten

half glass of brown sugar

1/3 glass of sunflower oil

1/2 glass of cacao

1,5 tsp of baking powder

1 tsp of vanilla extract or 20g of vanilla flavoured sugar

2 tsp on gingerbread spices mix (if you don’t have it, just add some cinnamon and cloves)

1 tsp of ground nutmeg

pinch of salt

a few tbs of white powdered sugar

Directions

Whisk eggs with sugar, add oil, all dry ingredients and knead dough. I can describe work with this dough as “very pleasant” as it is very elastic.

Cover the dough with plastic foil and let it chill in the fridge for not less than 2 hours.

Form balls from the dough (I checked the weight of each piece to make cookies look nice and similar, the weight was 25g in my case, which is enough for “1 bite cookie” but you can make them bigger too), and roll each one in powdered sugar.

Bake for 12-15 min in the oven preheated to 180C

It was written that crinkles can be stored for a week so don’t make them much sooner than Christmas.